Crossfire: ‘Nigeria has implemented a cassava incentive and subsidy scheme that has given the sector a competitive advantage. Other cassava producing countries could learn lessons from this model’

Gideon Onumah; Sanni Lateef Oladimeji

doi:10.3362/2046-1887.2015.002

Crossfire: ‘Nigeria has implemented a cassava incentive and subsidy scheme that has given the sector a competitive advantage. Other cassava producing countries could learn lessons from this model’

Dear Gideon,
Investment in the agricultural sectors in Nigeria, especially cassava, in the last 16 years has leapfrogged the sector into a competitive advantage. I want to look into the cassava incentive and subsidy scheme and convince you that it has given the sector such a boost.
Nigeria is currently the world’s largest producer of cassava, producing 38 million tonnes of fresh roots in 2010, 25 per cent more than the next largest producer, Brazil. It may interest you to know that about 90 per cent of the annual production of cassava in Nigeria is for human food while only 10 per cent is utilized for industrial products. But Nigeria accounts for a negligible amount of industrial cassava value-addition worldwide (Sanni, 2011).

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